Tuesday, June 29, 2010

This month, polls are showing a decrease in President Obama’s popularity among Latinos in the United States. Some say that the numbers reflect growing frustration over Obama's inaction on immigration reform.

"You have large segments of the Latino population who have as their number one legislative priority immigration reform," said Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, D-San Antonio. "The bottom line is that they haven't seen evidence of the legislation being moved in congress."

At the end of April, amidst widespread criticism of Arizona SB 1070, Obama announced that he was dropping immigration reform from his administration’s agenda this year.

However, controversy surrounding legislation like SB 1070 has provided an important catalyst for grassroots mobilization pushing for comprehensive immigration reform. It’s a critical time to keep the pressure on Obama and on our Congressional representatives. And based on the polls, Obama will have incentive to pay attention.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Imagine if the United States military staged a coup d’etat, removing the president from the White House and turning over power to another administration.

One year ago today, this is the situation that the citizens of Honduras were dealt when soldiers forced President Manuel Zelaya from the country. By recognizing the “elections” that the de facto government held last fall, the U.S. has condoned insurgent activity against constitutional order. Even more baffling are the millions of dollars of military aid that the State Department has pledged to the current regime.

The double standard couldn’t be any clearer: how is it that the United States claims to promote democratic values around the world, but makes an exception for Honduras as if nothing happened on June 28th, 2009? Witness for Peace has been speaking out about this paradox for a year and continues to document and publicize the Honduran government’s numerous human rights abuses. In fact, we are holding a delegation to Honduras this August for U.S. citizens to hear first-hand testimony and learn how they can support the resistance movement. Find out how you can get involved here.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Recently, President Barack Obama announced his intention to deploy U.S. National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico Border. This US military response to Mexican crime may seem new, but the U.S. has been backing Mexico in an increasingly militarized response to crime for the past couple of years under the Mérida Initiative.

As documented in numerous cases by the National Human Rights Commission and by non-governmental organizations, the army arbitrarily detains civilians and tortures them in military bases, sometimes falsifying medical certificates to claim that the victims were not tortured, with the aim of eliciting information or confessions related to organized crime. Recurring methods of torture documented by the Commission and by civil society organizations include beatings and application of electric shocks to sensitive body parts. Those who denounce violations face threats and attacks.

Finally, the army operates without meaningful control by civilian institutions. No military human rights violation committed during this presidential administration has been tried by the competent civilian authorities, and the military courts, according to information from the Ministry of the Interior, have sentenced just one soldier to a term of 9 months for shooting and killing a civilian. Meanwhile, the federal government states that civilians killed in the crossfire or by the army are “collateral damages,” despite the fact that as of today, roughly 23,000 civilians have been killed since December 2006 in Mexico’s drug war; last year alone, nearly 10,000 people were killed.

To give one concrete example of the above, we can mention a case that we documented and represented in Center Prodh: the case of four civilians arbitrarily War on Drugs, shot by soldiers in Sinaloa state in March 2008. The four were riding in a car with other family members when a group of soldiers in another vehicle opened fire with no justification, killing the victims and injuring two other passengers. The military authorities immediately took over the investigation, guaranteeing that the victims’ family members will not have access to justice. One family member, the wife of one of the victims, took the case all the way to Mexico’s Supreme Court, but the Court ruled that she did not have legal standing to challenge the military’s assumption of jurisdiction over the case. Thus, the military remains judge and jury in any case of human rights violations that is investigated at all.

In light of the above facts, it is difficult to argue that Mexico is gaining anything by deploying its army to do the work of police. In this context, perhaps the more interesting question is: what does the United States gain by financially supporting the Mexican army through the current Mérida Initiative?

The answer, currently, is quite simply: nothing. Or perhaps, put more cynically, it risks loosing face before the international community for throwing its support behind armed forces that are increasingly known throughout the world as violators of human rights, and whose participation in policing tasks have gone hand-in-hand with skyrocketing levels of criminal violence.

Now let’s ask a different question: what could the United States gain from a thoughtful, holistic, results-oriented approach to reducing criminal violence in Mexico? First and foremost, the U.S. could gain credibility – and advance security – by addressing effectively the engine that drives drug trafficking and drug-related violence in Mexico: demand for illegal drugs in the United States. In this sense, redirecting funding from Mexico’s military to treatment clinics in the United States would certainly bring a much more efficient return than the current Mérida Initiative. The Obama administration recently signaled its intention to place greater emphasis on treatment-based and demand-reduction approaches, although it remains to be seen what degree of change we can expect. Along similar lines, the need for the U.S. to halt the flow of arms into Mexico (U.S. guns currently serve as the armory for drug cartels) cannot be overstated.

To the extent that the U.S. remains engaged in security cooperation programs with the Mexican military and police, the minimum standard for such engagement must be that the basic human rights requirements already built into the Mérida Initiative are respected. By banning the use of torture to obtain confessions and prioritizing police transparency and accountability,the United States acknowledged that human rights were under threat in Mexico. Yet the United States did not keep up to its own standards: last year Washington released the portion of the Mérida Initiative funds supposedly conditioned on progress in these areas despite an obvious lack of advances. This year, then, the U.S. has the chance to regain legitimacy in this area and have a potential impact on human rights by withholding the conditioned funds until true progress has been made.

In short, the most effective steps that the United States can take right now to reduce drug violence in Mexico are to treat the problem on its own side of the border and respect its own laws regarding foreign aid. This is not to rule out all possibilities of collaboration between the two countries in the future, but it’s time to prioritize effective strategies and to place human rights front and center, rather than letting them become the collateral damages of a drug war that is unwinnable on current terms.

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Welcome to the Witness for Peace Blog!

This is your online resource for news, analysis, and action on U.S. foreign policy and corporate practice. You will also find stories of struggle and hope from our partners throughout Latin America.

Witness for Peace is a politically independent grassroots organization committed to nonviolence and led by faith and conscience. Witness for Peace's mission is to support peace, justice, and sustainable economies by changing the policies and practices which contribute to poverty and oppression in Latin America and the Caribbean.